Swans can dare to dream but Hawks' poor form gave them a leg-up

Can the Sydney Swans win the grand final? Yes. And not merely on the lottery-ticket-buying ''you've got to be in it to win it'' premise.

When you have beaten a team once - Sydney beat Hawthorn by 37 points in Launceston in April - you are not flying kites when you claim you can do it again. When you play with heart and pizazz and hit your peak at the right time, as Sydney have, confidence can not be mistaken for bravado.

Proving the can overcome hoodoos ... Sydney players rejoice after finally defeating Collingwood and ending an 11-match losing run to the side on Friday night. Photo: Quentin Jones

However - to apply the most sodden of wet blankets - this is a grand final the Swans could win, not one they should. Yes, they were more impressive than the asphyxiated Hawks in their preliminary final victory. Yes, in an age of forced egalitarianism, the gap between the best and next best has diminished.

Yet, this season more than most, rash judgments have been made on flimsy evidence. Carlton and Essendon were rated ''the real deal'' after significant, but ultimately misleading, performances. Neither made the top eight. To judge Sydney and particularly, Hawthorn, on their weekend form is to fall into the same trap.

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Sydney's credentials as finalist are bona fide. Well before Friday, the Swans had proven their improvement was genuine and sustained.

However, as well as the Swans played, all was not as the scoreboard suggested. Collingwood were physically and emotionally flat coming off a six-day break, and having attended the funeral of former teammate John McCarthy the day before the match. Had the Swans not broken a seven-year losing streak that night, it might still have been going when the first woman walked on Neptune.

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The most significant part of the contest was not how the Swans took what air was left from Collingwood's tyres, but how they responded when the Magpies showed signs of life. The flair added around the edges, exemplified by Lewis Jetta's brilliant cameos, is important. Adam Goodes is now the cream, not the cake. But the Swans' essence remains their stout hearts and granite heads.

Jubilant after that triumph, Sydney fans will have been justifiably emboldened by Hawthorn's near death experience against Adelaide. Prima facie, watching the unbackable favourites almost fail to qualify for the grand final suggests the Hawks are vulnerable. Particularly when a team used to playing the game on their own terms is robbed of space, and not permitted to cut the opposition to ribbons with their razor sharp ball movement.

However, as well as Adelaide played, many of the Hawks' wounds were self-inflicted. The chance for a fast, confidence-building start was blown because of poor conversion in the first quarter when they went inside their attacking zone 20 times, yet somehow trailed at the first break.

The longer Adelaide remained in the contest, the more constricted the Hawks' windpipes became. Hawthorn's lack of a second quality key defender was exposed, and it took some brilliance from Buddy Franklin and Cyril Rioli to pluck the game from the fire. Will that create self-doubt before the grand final? Or, just as likely, will it provide the ammunition their driven coach Alastair Clarkson needs to ensure they do not produce another sub-par performance?

The Hawthorn-Adelaide game resembled the 2007 preliminary final when the ripened Geelong just held on to beat the callow Collingwood - also by five points. The next week, Geelong beat Port Adelaide by 119 points.

Sydney is no Port Adelaide which, as history has proven, was the twitching corpse of a once-dominant team. That the Swans have only four survivors from the 2005 premiership team is a strength, not a weakness. The club has built astutely around a once-strong core, updated a famously dour game plan and, in the seamless transition from Paul Roos to John Longmire, defied the bloody precedent of coaching changes.

Sydney's best is very good. The season-long evidence suggests Hawthorn's is simply better - particularly on the MCG.

To Saturday's team the Hawks will add their heart-and-soul captain Luke Hodge, who won the Norm Smith Medal in the Hawks' upset victory over Geelong in 2008, who will provide both a competitive and emotional lift. The Swans, meanwhile, will hope defender Ted Richards, whose heroics have become as vital in the Swans' back half as premiership winner Leo Barry's once were, is fully fit.

Sydney is right to dream, perhaps even to expect. Midfield warriors Josh Kennedy and Jude Bolton are born to play finals. Saturday was not the first time Hawthorn have lost their nerve. If the Swans can exert physical and psychological pressure, they will be knee deep in the contest.